South Dakota Sobriety Program Participants Will No Longer Be Jailed for Non-Payment of Fees
by Chuck Sharman
The U.S. District Court for the District of South Dakota granted preliminary approval on December 3, 2025, to a settlement resolving a putative class-action challenge to Pennington County’s policy of diverting defendants to its 24-7 Sobriety Program and then jailing them when they can’t afford to pay its fees.
The agreement provides a $10,000 payment to lead Plaintiff Randy Lookingback and $1,000 each to 37 others who were similarly situated. It also includes a promise by the County, the state’s second-largest, not to jail anyone in the future for failure to pay fees associated with its chapter of the 24-7 program, whose current enrollment is 352. Instead, indigent participants will be referred back to the court where their cases originated, and a judge will make an ability-to-pay determination before levying any sanctions for non-payment.
The program began as a pilot in three South Dakota counties in 2005, going statewide two years later. Modeled after an earlier effort by former state Attorney General Larry Long (R), which he ran while serving as Attorney for Bennet County, the 24-7 program has spread to North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Wisconsin and Utah. Since taking it statewide in 2007, South Dakota has seen a dramatic decrease in felony DUI charges, from 1,092 to 468 in the 2025 fiscal year, according to the South Dakota Searchlight. Alcohol-related vehicle crashes have also fallen to 458 in 2024 from 630 18 years earlier.
When Lookingback was released from the Pennington County Jail (PCJ) in September 2023, he was ordered to participate in drug testing three times weekly under the 24-7 program. But he is homeless, and when he showed up for the first test two days later, he didn’t have the $10 fee. Police were called, and Lookingback was promptly returned to custody at the PCJ.
With the aid of Rapid City attorney James D. Leach, Lookingback filed his complaint that same day, accusing the County of violating his Fourteenth Amendment rights by jailing him without probable cause to suspect him of more than poverty—which, he pointed out, is not a crime. The complaint asked for class certification, which the district court’s order also gave preliminary approval. However, the settlement included an agreement by Lookingback not to move for final approval of the Class certification motion in exchange for the County’s promise to change its policy to bar future incarceration for nonpayment of program fees.
“If a person has been released from jail and ordered by a judge to comply with the 24-7 program as a condition of release but cannot pay,” County Sheriff Mike Milstead confirmed for the Searchlight, “then it is up to the judge to decide whether bond should be revoked, modified, or remain.”
Meanwhile, a Class Notice was published, and Leach further promised to help locate the other 37 people wrongly jailed like Lookingback. The settlement agreement included no fees for the attorney, promising any unclaimed settlement funds to the Debtor’s Prison Project run by the nonprofit Public Justice in Washington, D.C. See: Lookingback v. Pennington Cty., USDC (D.S.D.), Case No. 5:23-cv-05065. Further settlement details are available at https://www.penningtoncounty247settlement.com.
Lucas Oyler, a former 24-7 program state coordinator, testified to state lawmakers in 2022 that Sheriffs might opt out without the ability to jail participants for nonpayment of fees. But Long said that he has always advised Sheriffs to reserve incarceration for those who skip or fail required testing. “You don’t go to jail for not paying,” he said, acknowledging that the sheriffs didn’t always listen to him. He also told the Searchlight that making the program free for the indigent would keep it available to “the ones who’d most benefit from it.”
“There is some community benefit to keeping these folks sober,” he added.
Additional source: South Dakota Searchlight
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